No End Seen to Flap Over Calif. Home School Policy

Scores of California home schooling parents defied the instructions
of the state schools chief and filed affidavits this month with the
state education department saying that they are running private
schools.

Advocacy groups for home schooling had encouraged parents to file
the affidavits, even though Superintendent of Public Instruction
Delaine Eastin reiterated in July her position that home schooling
parents who do not have teaching credentials are operating "outside of
the law," and are not operating valid private schools.

Home schooling parents, who note that California law doesn't require
teachers at private schools to have teaching credentials, maintain that
they can operate under the "private school" provision in state law. The
parents' action is the latest twist in a running dispute over how the
state defines and treats families who school their children at
home.

Michael Smith, the president of the Home School Legal Defense
Association in Purcellville, Va., argued in an interview that Ms.
Eastin is wrong.

"We feel that the law is clear the way it is," he said. "We've been
home schooling [in California] through the private school exemption.
The issue is whether home schoolers can comply with the private school
provision, and they can."

Such differing interpretations of California law illustrate what can
happen in states that have not updated their laws to specifically
address the burgeoning home schooling movement.

According to California Department of Education interpretations,
home schooling parents may teach their children under a tutoring
provision of the law, but only if the parents have state teaching
credentials. They should not file affidavits saying they are running
private schools, Ms. Eastin wrote in a July memo.

After Ms. Eastin distributed the memo, home schooling parents
flooded her with so many calls and letters accusing her of unfairly
applying the state's compulsory schooling law to them that she wrote to
legislators in August asking them to change state education law to
address home schooling.

Currently, the terms "home schools" and "home schooling" do not
appear in the California law.

"If home schools are to be authorized in California, that change
needs to be made clear in the law," Ms. Eastin advised legislators. "If
there are conditions that ought to be placed upon the quality of
education being offered in a home school, then that should be made
clear as well."

But last week, no one could point to a concrete sign that the
legislature, in fact, would address Ms. Eastin's concerns. The state
superintendent is finishing her second term and cannot seek
re-election.

No Action

Nichole Winger, the director of communications for the state
department of education, said she had heard discussion "through the
grapevine" that some legislators believe, "'Well, we need to do
something.'" But she couldn't name any lawmakers who had publicly
promised to take up the issue of home schooling legislation.

Lawmakers didn't address home schooling before their summer session
ended on Aug. 31, and the issue didn't seem to have much urgency last
week for legislators who were called for this story. Neither the
president of the state Senate nor the chairman or vice chairman of the
Senate education committee returned phone calls asking for comment.

Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, the Democrat who heads the education
committee in the lower house, did grant a telephone interview on the
topic. But she doesn't see any need to change the current law.

The reasons she gives for her views differ, though, from those of
home schooling advocates. Ms. Goldberg believes the law is clear that
parents who don't have teaching credentials aren't authorized to teach
their own children— and she doesn't think they ought to be able
to.

California isn't the only state that doesn't specifically name home
schooling in education laws.

At least 11 other states don't, according to Mr. Smith of the Home
School Legal Defense Association. "All of these states have a private
school law that home schoolers operate under," he said.

The courts have stood by such interpretations, according to Mr.
Smith. In 1985, for example, the Texas Supreme Court decided in
Texas Education Agency et al. v. Leeper et al. that home
schooling parents could instruct their children under the private
school provision in Texas law, he said.

"What tends to shock people when they call us about home schools [in
Texas] is to find there's absolutely no oversight by anybody for those
schools," said Debbie Graves Ratcliffe, the director of communications
for the Texas Education Agency. "The courts have told us to leave them
alone."

California's Ms. Winger, on the other hand, points to Pennsylvania
as a model for how a state should address home schooling in its laws
and written guidelines.

Pennsylvania Model

Sarah Pearce, an adviser for the school services unit of the
Pennsylvania Department of Education, said that her state changed its
education law in 1988 because of pressure from home schooling advocacy
groups.

Before then, parents couldn't teach their children at home unless
they had teaching credentials. Now they can. But they also must meet
various state requirements, such as providing portfolios of their
children's work and ensuring that their children take standardized
tests in grades 3, 5, and 8.

One California school board, the San Diego County board of
education, has put the onus on the state department of education to
clear up any ambiguity about home schooling.

In a September resolution, the board declared that "it supports
private home education and strongly encourages the California
Department of Education to clarify the Education Code Regulations to
support home schooling, which it believes was always the intent of the
California legislature."

Vol. 22, Issue 9, Pages 23, 26

Published in Print: October 30, 2002, as No End Seen to Flap Over Calif. Home School Policy

The California Department of
Education posts administrative resources on private schools. In the
section addressing frequently asked questions,
the departments states that, "A home-based private school or
‘home school’ is generally understood as a situation where
a non-credentialed parents teach their own children, exclusively,
usually using a correspondence course or other types of courses. Filing
an affidavit does not make ‘home school’ a private
school."

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